Benefits of Replacing UGC and AICTE with HECI

04 July 2018

Benefits of Replacing UGC and AICTE with HECI

You would have heard about the government replacing UGC and AICTE with a new HECI (Higher Education Commission of India). But before we turn our heads in favour of a single governing body for Higher Education system let us understand what the role of UGC pertaining to higher education is. Basically, UGC is responsible to provide funds to universities and maintain the ethics in the institutes of higher education. Also, keep a track of all the fake universities, UGC is always vigilant to help the students to recognise the rejected universities.

UGC is doing a great job… then why dissolve it?

There are different opinions about the dissolution. Where on one side higher education secretary R.Subrahmanyam told that HECI will focus on the quality of education freely. It will work on the learning outcome, evaluate academic performance, and may even order the closure of institute if it fails to adhere to minimum quality standards. UGC in contrast only publishes the list of the rejected university.

Here is the list of benefits HECI will bring on the table

1. The single regulatory body will reduce the scope of governance and focus on academics.

2. It will break the over-regulation regime of UGC and AICTE for the technical and non-technical institution.

3. HECI aims to achieve a high level of excellence in the Indian Education System.

4. The single body regulation is said to allow more autonomy to the available B-schools.

5. Experts believe that B-School will have a competitive advantage when given more autonomy.

6. The single regulatory body will bring about better regulation in terms of academicians, faculty as well as corporate leaders.

7. The new body will rectify the anomalies and shortcomings of UGC and AICTE.

8. HECI will bring about better quality assessment system and better ranking of institutes as per the performance.

9. HECI will encourage research environment and easy allocation of funds to improve the quality of students, faculties, and Institution.

Though we can expect lots of benefits from the replacement there is another side of the coin which should also be considered.

K Laxmi Narayana, a teacher at Hyderabad Central University economics department believes that centrally structured policies and annual quality analysis can bring down the regulation aspect of the institute. Even the idea of receiving funds directly from the ministry will increase the interference of the government in deciding the academic structure. Institutional heads feel that the direct control of funding by the ministry they will be forced to carry forward what they will be told. (Ref: https://goo.gl/XDuVt7)

What is your opinion about this? Please share your comments in the comment section below.